A. Charles King: A Unique Contribution to Anaesthesia

was rapidly expanding in technological terms and this expansion was facilitated by the skills of the various anaesthetic instrument manufacturers of that time. The doyen of these was Arthur Charles King (Figure 1) who provided in his various premises not only the facilities needed by the rapidly developing specialty but a unique atmosphere which fostered enthusiastic research into improvement in the manufacturing and design of apparatus. King was bom on 15 March 1888 at 1 Upper Park Street (renamed Bewdley Street in 1934) in Islington, London Ni. His father, a postal sorter, senthim to the local primary school in Canonbury Road for his early years but moved him at the age of 10 to a private school, Owens, near the Angel, Islington. He was a good but not brilliant scholar, his school reports placing him in the upper middle half of his various forms. He left school at the age of 14 on 26 March 1902 and became apprenticed to a local engineering firm. His first commercial work involved the filing of ratchets on a handbrake ofa barouche an early horse-drawn carriage. The skills he developed in engineering at this early time in his life were to lay the foundation on which his future company was based. His apprenticeship completed, and lacking the money to enter medical school as he wanted, King joined a medical supply company as a salesman. He spent his days selling medicine bottles and dressings to local doctors and this regular employment permitted his marriage on 29 April 1914 to Mary Head. The outbreak of the First World War meant a